A Food & Pastry Blog

Keen’s Cheddar

This cheese is not for the faint of heart. I’m a huge fan of sharp cheddar cheese but have never tasted anything like it. It’s crumbly and streaked with blue veins, and tastes like a cross between a sharp cheddar and a blue cheese, with an intense, very earthy and grassy flavor. Not your everyday cheddar by any means.

I read about this cheddar in the Murray’s Cheese Handbook, where it was described as a quintessential artisanal English Cheddar. The Keen family has been making cheddar for over a century at their farm in Somerset, England. They make the cheese with unpasteurized milk from their herd of cows. It’s aged for about a year, wrapped in cloth that allows it to form a rind.

Neal’s Yard Dairy exports the cheese to the U.S.; I bought it on iGourmet.com, for $8.99 a half pound.